Obamacare and the tea party

Political parties delight when there are rifts within their opponent's ranks. As a member of the tea party, I've been verbally attacked by everyone from President Barack Obama to the friends with whom I work. The Democrats rolled out an enormous campaign to discredit and marginalize the tea party as a fringe movement ever since we first marched down Pennsylvania Avenue in 2009. Their friends in the media took up the cause and, as a result, our motives are routinely attributed to racism rather than love of country. Democrats assure themselves that's our motive and have managed to convince a large segment of the population that it's true.

Fellow Republicans don't accuse us of racism, but they are embarrassed that we bring "public humiliation" to the party and set the cause of Republicans back by our vocal opposition to not only the Obama administration's policies, but those of the Bush administration as well. The beating we were dealt for the stand U.S. Sen. Todd Cruz took over the Affordable Care Act still has establishment GOP seething, and literally pointing fingers in our faces.

Given that even left-leaning media like Brian Williams at NBC Nightly News is reporting that millions of Americans are losing their health care coverage, given the problems the government's web site has encountered and, critically, given that President Obama insisted that there will be no delay in the implementation of Obamacare, and won big political points with that stance during the government shutdown — given all those things — you would think that somebody in the media would consider the possibility that Senator Cruz, having foreseen the disaster that was about to occur, made his stand out of love of country. That the prospect of millions of Americans floundering out there, freshly kicked off their insurance plans with no functioning web site to go to buy a replacement plan was abhorrent to him, especially considering President Obama insisted there would be no extension. It was, in fact, President Obama who unnecessarily shut down the government with his rigid stance yet he has already delayed it six weeks and may have to delay it some more. President Obama was wrong. Ted Cruz was right.

Of course, the White house has declared that the president didn't know there were problems with the site. And, maybe he didn't know all those people would get kicked off their plans. And maybe he didn't know that premiums would actually go up instead of going down $2,500 like he said they would. It seems absurd that his advisers wouldn't tell him these things when he was making such a controversial and public stance. Perhaps the president should stop listening to whomever is advising him since they don't seem to keep him all that informed, and start listening to the people Ted Cruz listens to — us, the people, people who actually read the bills.

One can't help but wonder if the same people who failed to inform President Obama of the problems Obamacare would cause are the same people who are advising him that continual pumping of money into the system by the Federal Reserve won't ultimately dilute the dollar to the point that it's worth a fraction of what it's worth now. Are these the same people who tell him that our debt is not a problem even as $17 trillion accrues interest? Are they the same ones who whisper in his ear that the tea party only says these things because they're racist? That the tea party couldn't possibly have benevolent reasons for their stance?